two pathes
by Suk-fong
Summary: If things were different, would you still love me?


disclaimer: disclaimed.  
notes: don't forget a03 is only for REGISTERED USERS. Also this was all her prompt. Tumblr: Seevikifangirl  
dedicated: adorablecresta HAPPY BIRTHDAY  
ship: Annie/Finnick Gloss/Annie Cashmere/Finnick  
title: two pathes  
summary: If things were different, would you still love me?

* * *

He meets the love of his life at a wedding.

More specifically, her wedding when Cashmere sends him to find her brother's blushing bride to make sure she's not as nervous as Gloss is, wearing a hole in the floor.

She's lovely with dark hair falling in waves framing a small face.

She's also sitting on her hunches, a satin ball gown pooling around her waist as she's playing a first person shooter against him.

'Fuck you,' she tells him when he kills with a headshot. 'Fuck you so much.'

He laughs.

* * *

The first time they go on a date, they're in laws and it's a double date to a Jays game, that only Gloss and Cashmere care about. Cashmere can't possibly leave to get food now, and Gloss hasn't said more than three words to any of them since the first pitch was thrown.

When they're coming back up the steps, him with four large hot dogs and messy fries on a tray and her holding the beer and a pretzel, they're caught on the Kiss Cam.

'Well shit,' he says as they hear chants to kiss. Annie shrugs, and stands on her tip toes-she's too short for her to anything else and makes a sloppy exaggerated kiss on his check, making sure her bright pink lipstick smudges all over his cheek.

'Your husband's going to beat me up,' he complains once they're off the screen.

Annie laughs, 'Please. I'm more afraid of Cash scratching my eyes out.'

'She's a pussy cat.' Finnick argues, following her up the stairs.

'Oh god don't talk about my sister-in-law's vag to me,' Annie laughs. 'I tell Gloss everything, he'll be traumatized.'

'I wasn't-' he catches himself, rolling his eyes at the smirking one ahead of him. 'It's a very good pussy. Grade A quality. Would lick again.'

'Oh my god.'

* * *

Annie doesn't consider Finnick her best friend, until she gets hired for the legal department of the ad agency he works for.

She's not Gloss's best friend, she's known that for years, she married he knowing that Cashmere and Gloss were born best friends. Their umbilical chords were wrapped around their necks, and they were either both going to be dead, or come out alive. A bond that strong, husband and wife couldn't even scratch the surface.

It did make watching _Game of Thrones_ a bit interesting, with her and Finnick making all the smart ass comments while Gloss rolled his eyes and Cashmere threw couch pillows at them.

Jo isn't best friend material-she's honest yes, but rude and crude and cruel and really she doesn't need that negativity in her life-especially when her anxiety comes up.

But Finnick and her carpool (twins, they live a block away), and take lunch together, they argue over clients with Chinese food at the Saturday Night Family Dinner Cashmere enforces. Cashmere lets them know what it's like in the world of social work and taking abused children into foster care while Gloss whines about the perils of IT for the elderly.

But really what sinchs Finnick in the best friend spot is that he hates the Bruins as much as she does, and is more than willingly to trash talk them at every waking moment.

* * *

It's on a Saturday night, when you could really say it was a Sunday morning when Gloss is up in bed, and Cashmere is asleep on the sofa when she realizes she might have a crush on her brother-in-law.

They're playing Risk, and neither will yield and they're swearing like they don't know anything but cuss words-she doesn't remember why, but it's become a joke and it's something she likes. Gloss doesn't swear and neither does Cashmere-they have a swear jar, and she's put most of the money in it. The twins say it shows a limited vocabulary. Finnick when he heard that, said they just don't know how versatile fuck can be.

This is a problem , a very big one. She can't have a crush on her brother-in-law. She's twenty-nine, you don't get crushes at twenty-nine. And more importantly Finnick is her best friend, married to her sister-in-law, her husband's twin sister.

So yes this is a very big problem. She thinks it's the beer, and the late night and not the way Finnick's hair looks tousled by the wind no matter way, and if she ran her hands through his hair, it would be soft and perfect for her to knot and drag him down for a kiss.

'What's wrong Cresta?' he taunts, ''Fraid I'm gonna beat you?'

'Oh fuck you Odair,' she rolls her eyes, making sure that the "fuck you" sounds like a casual insult, not like a wish list.

'You couldn't handle it, if I did' he tells her cocky and a bit too flirty for in-laws, especially with his wife on the couch in the living room and her husband upstairs.

'You sure about that?' she asks.

He doesn't say anything, but there's a dark light in his eyes.

She's not stupid enough to think of it as anything more than a reflection.

* * *

He finds out from Katniss, from accounts, quite accidently that everyone thinks he and Annie are married.

He's a private guy, so he doesn't have any photos of his wedding to Cashmere at his desk, and Annie hates having her photo taken, but there is a photobooth strip taped to her computer of her and Gloss-though it's grimy and tiny.

He can understand, they both wear rings, they're close. They arrive and leave together more often than not and they take lunch to each other. Their weekend plans consist of seeing each other because of their spouses.

It's just workplace gossip, but it feels a bit odd. Cashmere and Gloss won't mind it, and Annie will find it hilarious-she'll probably on purpose when she finds out kiss his cheek and make sure it's lipstick stained to keep the rumours going.

He doesn't deny them when he's asked.

* * *

He's the first person to know Annie is pregnant, mainly because she's at work and he's called hurriedly by someone from Legal to take Annie to the hospital because she's been barfing all morning.

He's all for it, physically carrying Annie into his car, making her hold a garbage pail because he doesn't want Annie puke-which is smaller than an average person because she's a smaller person, but is still puke-on him, asking her if she has her health card when she stops him.

'I'm late,' she tells him.

'All your meetings will be canceled Cresta-you're not dying in my car because I want to sell it one day and that will bring down the rate significantly.'

'Finnick I'm late,' she repeats, her hand gripping his on the clutch stopping his nervous babble in stride.

'Oh,' he says. '_Oh_. For real?'

'Yeah,' she nods, and it looks like she's eaten the sun, the way she's radiating light. But it might be a trick of his eyes, because she was on death's door ten second ago. 'Three weeks.'

'Well fuck,' he says hugging her awkwardly, with the garbage pail between them. 'You're going to be a Mom.'

'Yeah,' Annie grins, too big for her face and crookedly. It looks amazing on her.

'A real life Mom.'

'That's the plan.'

'Holy fuck.'

'There's nothing holy about babies.'

'There's this teenage mom who would argue with you on that one,' Finnick says. 'You're a Mom. And Gloss-Gloss will be a Dad.'

'Yeah,' she beams.

His mouth feels a bit dry.

* * *

Gloss and Finnick are both way too involved with her pregnancy. It amuses Cashmere and kind of freaks her out. Cashmere has been very vocal about not wanting kids, she sees too many broken homes and broken families and she doesn't want to be a statistic-even though Finnick would never be a deadbeat dad.

Gloss has them signed up for prenatal classes and all the other stuff she's never heard of. Finnick walks her to her office and makes her take the stairs only when she's with people in case she falls down them.

She's still coming to terms with the fact that she's having a baby when she gets her period.

There's blood on her panties and she screams. She screams, hysterically because she can't be having her period.

Finnick kicks open the bathroom door, once the office finds out she's barricaded herself in there, hysterical trying to make all the bleeding and pinching stop.

He drives like a madman to the hospital and Gloss meets them there with three speeding tickets.

They lose the baby.

* * *

Annie's different. Of course she would be different-she lost a baby before the first trimester. But she's withdrawn, and quiet. Like a ghost, as if she'll make any noise someone will yell at her.

Gloss doesn't know how to fix this and a weekend at a spa with Cashmere just gets painted nails and a very sad Cashmere.

He tries to talk to Annie but she pushes him away.

He doesn't know how to help her.

* * *

Annie goes swimming, it's the one thing she does and she doesn't know if it's because it relaxes her, or maybe she's subtly trying to drown-how can she fuck up a pregnancy?

Either way she swims; she spends every waking moment when she's not at work at the local pool. Gloss comes, but he can't keep up and he ends up in the lazy river.

Cashmere and Finnick come too, and Finnick keeps up pace.

She doesn't know what to do; her marriage is falling apart. She can't keep a baby-because they've tried. They've tried and nothing is staying.

She swims and maybe she'll forget how to move her arms, how to kick and she'll forget how to breathe.

* * *

She goes to the park after swimming, or sometimes a coffee shop. Finnick joins her on Saturday mornings, for both the swim and the after stuff.

She likes it, more than she should. But he doesn't push, he doesn't ask like Cashmere why don't they adopt, or a surrogate or anything. He doesn't look at her sadly, like she's broken or wrong like Gloss does and like he doesn't know who she is anymore.

They talk about books, movies, politics. They talk about everything and anything.

She thinks she might be falling in love with Finnick, because he's just there. He's solid and warm and he knows her well enough to know that she can't deal with talking about babies, about her marriage dissolving in her hands like taffy in warm water.

He knows her well enough to know she's not in love with Gloss anymore.

* * *

He's thirty-five when Gloss tells Cashmere (and him) that he and Annie are separating. It's been five years since the first miscarriage and two years since Annie found out she has a thyroid disease which makes pregnancies not only hard to maintain but painful.

Gloss looks broken, like a window pane shattered by a bat in one corner, and the fractures have just travelled outwards, until everything is cracked.

'I'm sorry,' he tells him.

Gloss looks at him, with blue eyes identical to Finnick's wife. 'Me too,' he says.

* * *

He doesn't know how to fix the marriage. He thinks he has to, because this is family and he wants Gloss happy and Annie happy.

But he knows that Annie is trapped in that marriage, ghosts of children she cannot have dragging around and Gloss is not in love with the woman his wife has become. She's not vibrant and funny anymore, but subdue and softer.

He doesn't know how to fix a marriage that is over, and should stay that way because it might be the only reason why he hasn't kissed his sister-in-law.

* * *

Cashmere still tries to be friends with Annie even with her marriage dissolving. It doesn't help that Annie moves back to the west coast, she wants to be with her parents and Gloss and Cashmere's east coast upbringing just reminds her of what she'll never have.

Gloss helps her move, but the actual drive across the country is Finnick.

Gloss and Cashmere go to Mexico, for a family reunion.

'You don't have to do this,' she tells him.

Finnick looks at her like she's stupid, before flickering back to the road. 'Of course I did.'

'No you really don't.'

'Annie I do.'

'Why?' she asks. The car is silent.

'You know why.'

And she does, and it doesn't make it better.


End file.
